Iowa State Fitting the Run from the 3 High Defense with Split Field Principles.

The 3 high 3 safety defense is utilized by several coaches in college football. Iowa State and Jon Heacock play this defense. He uses the concept and plays the defense as part of their base scheme. It is not to be confused with the 3-3 stack defense, as it is a 3-2 base box that can fluctuate into other concepts.

The nice thing about it is you can still play all your split field cover 2 and 4 concepts from the defense. The middle safety is a bonus player in the scheme. They use him very aggressively in their split field run fits. When they play 4, 2 and 6, that middle safety is quite aggressive. He will fly to the football when he reads run. But they will still have cover 4 or 2 on the outside and be sound against pass.

When you break them down from the 2023 season, they played approximately 70% zone and 20% man. This doesn’t include the red zone coverage of 5%. The other 5% were some special coverage concepts.

You will see Iowa State play the following coverages from the defense in 2023:

Cover 4=35%
Cover 3=18%
Cover 2=11%
Cover 6=8% (4 to the field, 2 to the boundary)
Cover 0= 5%  
Cover 1=7%
Cover 2 man=6%

First lets look at some basic alignments vs different sets.

Base Twins to the field, h that side:

Middle Safety: 8 yards cheats over #3 to passing strength

Outside Safeties:10-12

Jacks: 12 balanced, TE to the boundary twins to the field.

Middle safety:Align 1 yard outside tackle

SS: 2x10 off #2 Weak Safety: 2x 10 off OT

Twins to the boundary H to the field

vs Trips/motion to Trips

vs 12 personnel

vs Bunch

They walk the middle safety down off #3 in the bunch set.CB outside of #1. Keep in mind this is 3rd down and they are playing zone with it so they are in a pass rushing alignment.

Vs 13 and Heavy

Bear with the safeties cheated over. Interesting look, but when you watch the clips everyone fills their gaps and are disciplined.

Here are 2 clips of the scheme

Now that’s it for some basic alignments. We will keep unbalanced for another day!

Coverage and Run Fits

Now, lets look at some coverage concepts and run fits. They will play their split field coverage concepts and use the middle safety in the run fit quite often.

Cover 2

Front Bear

Film: